You’re unlikely to have missed that CES was going on last week, and it coughed up a few gaming bits and pieces. One of these was a demo of the rather shiny-looking Lego Universe. The all-seeing record-o-brain of GameTrailers was there, and it delivered the five walkthrough videos you can see posted below. It shows the character creation, glimpses of the world, the importation of Lego constructs, and so on. It’s interesting that you can see a lot of the seminal Lego Star Wars design influence in there. It’s going to be for kids, it seems, but also for very big kids. A mixture of the basic run-about-smashing-stuff fun of the previous Lego games, with co-op building, competitive building, action stuff such as racing and combat, all combined with the user-generated input that Lego is clearly going to inspire in generations of plastic-brick-layers. Go take a look.

a) All creations are moderated. Lego penises will be at a minimum.
b) There is brick-by-brick building. Go back and watch the bit where he has to make a bat for no discernable reason. That’s the interface at a simple level.

Now, consider the throwaway mention of player-owned land for building on, and start imagining. You and a team of similarly childish friends working together to build a massive fortress of Lego, complete with landing pad for zepplins and biplanes and a massive cannon for launching you across the map.

brick-by-brick building is actually very difficult, and quite tedious.
download LDD (http://ldd.lego.com/) – its quite awkward even with a mouse+keyboard.

note: I should mention that when i say its awkward – its hard to make anything that uses trickier building techniques. (not building vertically, having studs ‘not on top’ etc). ie, anything of note that looks pretty cool – like the stuff you see here : http://www.brothers-brick.com/

not saying it cant/shouldnt be done, but its harder than it looks and something we have to bear in mind for the younger market that will be playing them – we cant force them to do it or they will give up quickly. awesome addition for the older more patient types though.

I think it has a lot of potential but it’s a little off-putting when he keeps talking about how the game is for kids.. Sure it’s gonna be suitable for them, but I’d hate to be always getting the feeling of playing a game made for kids.

This looks like “Lego Star Wars” online. That is good, but not impresive. What is impresive is the enormeous quality of some stuff, and the fun all around the game. A bit boring to see a “Give me 10 rat tails” and Quest (rat tails=imagination orbs), and al the Everquest/WoW thing again.

I’m pretty sure the LEGO Universe free building experience will rock your socks off. On top of normal brick by brick building, remember that LEGO actually has developed a basic scripting language (WeDo) for use with LEGO bricks. Basic behaviour scripting + virtual lego models anyone? You can basically create your own mini lego games, LEGO maps with scripted behaviours, and sharing them with friends or making them accessible to everyone playing the game, earning reputation based on the popularity of your creations. This is what will make LEGO Universe awesome, the content will be player generated, and shared in web 2.0 style, so that the best creations will be available to everyone. In regards to moderation, LEGO Universe being for kids, all shared user generated content will be moderated in a very clever way.